What is the most overrated weapon in history?

It's more about the English Longbow. There's a whole myth surrounding it. I've seen people claim that it's better than an AK47.

>until it's bigger badder cousin the musket
arquebus is the bigger and badder one. that's pretty much the point that made musket more practical.

I'm pretty sure the Ottomans and the Japanese disagree with that. The arquebus changed the way the Japs fought and all the successful warlords wanted to get their hands on them. The Japanese also used them to good use during their invasion of Korea.

The point is MAD.

Imagine how fucking badass would it have been to have manned one of these during the Gallic wars, dropping smelly Gauls from 100 meters with ease and knowing you have the privilege of operating the most advanced individually-served weapon ever devised (at the time).

That's another weapon with a lot of memes

>you can drag it through 5 miles of,mud and shit and it will still fire xDDDD

These were only cool because it was such a bitch to dogfight in them.

WW2 made damn good use of planes, but they didn't do much in WW1. Fuck the Red Baron.

really the just supplanted or supplemented bows, they didn't change to much except siege warfare

Win button

I would be even more happy to be roman

i never understood why they even bothered to make something like that outside scientific research. anyone can see that it has literally nothing but disadvantages over rope-powered ballista.

Longbows did literally nothing at Agincourt. Bows are a great weapon, but no against armoured targets

Spotting was incredibly important during ww1

The Tzar bomba was used you stupid faggot. Not on humans, but it was used.

This. It was shitty muddy terrain and the English well fortified position that did fucked the French. Longbows got cucked at Patay by 1500 Franks while the English had about 5000 longbows.

Swords in general. Apart from the Roman gladius, they were almost all secondary weapons. Most troops until the introduction of guns were using either polearms or bows. Horsemen such as knights would charge in with lances and would only pull their swords if they lost their lances. And even then, many of them preferred maces, war picks or axes, which are better against armor. Infantry were mostly using polearms in a phalanx-like formation, especially because not everyone could afford a sword.

The sword was a very good personal weapon, you can carry it with you while doing your own thing and use it for self defense against bandits and such, but it wasn't a primary weapon of war. The modern equivalent of it would be a handgun, while polearms would be assault rifles.

>Swords
>Overrated
You can carry it around with you as you walk town m8. Thereby making it a primary weapon.

And swords have more "business" to it than a hatchet or a club. Wear a sword in Imperial China, the Holy Roman Empire, or the Italian City states meant that pleb robbers ad shitty people in general should not play you for shit.

Yes, a primary weapon for civilians, like a modern handgun. But not a primary weapon of war.

>glorious nippon steel folded 1000000000000 times

1v1 me irl
You can have a sword, axe, mace, war hammer, katana, or spear
And I'll take the bow and arrow

And I'll take the shield.

spear

It just happened it was used all around the world by both peasant levies and proffesional soldiers or even pharaohs right?

The longbow has a small recurve at either end, the bow pictured does not.

t. Jon Snow

Um no.

And even more no

death star eh?

;)

Every single battleship produced after 1921. Doesn't matter where it was made or what the design was.

I would say the Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Frisian seaxs are also exceptions to the rule that swords are useless in infantry combat. The small blades could find gaps in shield walls and cause damage to the front line by stabbing the upper legs and groins of men.

This post couldn't be more wrong.

Swords have been the primary weapon on combat in every single case where it could be afforded.

Swords were almost always sidearms, and spears and other pole weapons were almost always the primary and favored weapon. This is not an opinion, it is a fact.

No it isn't.

The terms harquebus, caliver and musket refereed to the caliber of the weapon.

Harquebuses were the smallest caliber at 20-24 gauge and muskets were the largest at 10-12 gauge. Calivers were in between at 16-18 gauge.

Idk about overrated, but the staff is probably one of the most underrated.